I stood in the parking lot longer than I needed to. New buildings. New names on the doors. New faces moving with purpose, all of them already belonging to one another in ways I did not yet understand. Seventeen years is a long time to belong to a place. Long enough that the place teaches your body how to move without asking. Long enough that names become shortcuts and hallways become memory. Long enough that goodbye does not come cleanly.

Nashville did not release me easily. It never does. Too many late night phone calls when someone had run out of hope and did not know who else to call. Too many hospital rooms where faith did not arrive with answers but showed up anyway. Too many moments standing in formation or sitting across a desk thinking, this is holy ground even if no one says it out loud. I learned the geography of people there. I learned where courage hides when it is tired. I learned how laughter survives alongside grief. I learned how God shows up quietly in uniformed lives that rarely slow down enough to notice.

Leaving that is not simply a change of assignment. It is a small grief. You do not pack it in a box. You carry it with you. I carry Nashville with me in the sound of names I still pray. In stories that shaped me more than any course or credential. In faces that taught me that chaplaincy is less about answers and more about staying present when everything in you wants to fix or flee.

Now here I am. New unit. New mission. New soil under my feet. And this soil is familiar in ways I did not expect. I was born in Ohio. I left when life moved fast and forward. I have not returned for any length of time in thirty five years. Yet there is something disarming about standing in a place that remembers you even when you have forgotten parts of yourself. A kind of quiet recognition. A sense that God has been patient, waiting for the long arc to bend back around.

I do not believe in coincidences when it comes to vocation. I believe God opens doors slowly enough that we can walk through them without fear, and sometimes fast enough that we do not overthink our obedience. This feels like a new mission field, not because the needs here are greater than anywhere else, but because they are particular. Because the people are particular. Because God is always doing something specific with specific lives in specific places.

To this unit, I come first as a listener. I come as a shepherd who does not yet know all the terrain but trusts the flock will teach him where the cliffs and quiet waters are. I come with reverence for what already exists here. I come knowing that pastoral ministry is earned in moments, not announced in titles. I will show up. I will stay. I will hold confidence when you cannot. I will not rush your stories or reduce your pain to clichés.

Seventeen years taught me this. God rarely does the dramatic thing first. God does the faithful thing. Over and over. In offices and hangars and kitchens and late night texts. In births and funerals and all the ordinary Tuesdays in between.

It is strange and beautiful to begin again. Strange to carry so much memory into a room where none of it is known yet. Beautiful to trust that God wastes nothing, not years, not places, not even the long roads that take us away from home before bringing us back changed.

I am grateful for where I have been. I am attentive to where I am. And I am hopeful for where we are going together. This feels less like starting over and more like continuing a story that God has been telling longer than any of us realized.